Clips Round-up for 11/29/11

Submitted by mrober@publicam... on Tue, 11/29/2011 - 16:27

Oh no! Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) isn't running for re-election! A Fair Elections supporter, Frank once said, "We’re the only people I know who are expected to take large amounts of money from perfect strangers and have it have no effect on our behavior." Here's the Globe story on his departure: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2011/11/29/barney_frank_potent_political_force_and_master_of_one_liners/?p1=News_links.

Will the 2012 election by anti-incumbent? Maybe, but it's not yet in the numbersJust released report from Campaign Finance Institute: "The money figures show that the best-funded challenger in each House district had raised about 25 percent as much as the incumbents they were hoping to defeat. This is not very different from the past three elections, when there was both a big turnover and a strong partisan tide"Ethics extends Hastings, Young probes"The House Ethics Committee is extending a probe into possible ethics violations by Reps. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) and Don Young (R-Alaska)." Hastings, likely, on allegations he sexually harassed a staffer and Young for possible campaign finance violations.

Parties contest election-monitoring techniquesI think this is my favorite line from this article on Tea Party "poll watchers:" "Engelbrecht said the volunteers reported 800 “polling place incidents,” some of which she said were certain voter fraud. The complaints were filed with the county, which investigated some of them but did not pursue legal action."

Political advertisements go mobile for 2012 elections"Geo-targeted mobile advertising, which made its debut among political campaigns during the 2010 midterms but is just now becoming more widespread, offers presidential campaigns an attention-getting new way to stalk voters wherever they may be found — the state fair, the ballgame or the caucus site."

Protesters' charges to be droppedLove this line from a guy in Occupy Omaha who decided to protest because of Citizens United: "If you call a corporation a person, then, yeah, we're stepping on people's toes. I want to step all over Wells Fargo's toes."

Other3 Perdue associates indictedOops: "A Wake County grand jury today handed down indictments alleging that a top aide to Gov. Bev Perdue's 2008 campaign schemed to pay a staffer $32,000 for work that was kept off the books in violation of state election laws."

O'Malley DGA fundraising: The appearance of conflictSome pushback in Maryland on the recent story about donations flooding into Gov. Martin O'Malley's Democratic Governors Association. "The only real chance to cure what ails the system on the federal, state and local levels is to institute public campaign finance."